Not Naive
by pretentious-emo-kid
Summary: HR. Set series eight time. Ruth is back. He has always thought her naive...


A/N: I DON"T OWN SPOOKS

Just a little thing – not quite angsty, not quite romantic – based on a comment I made on the Spooks Information Central forum (under the name Giggler), and which was responded to by nonsenseandmischief. It just all got me thinking. So, nonsenseandmischief, though you probably don't even remember the comment, much less care – thanks. (Or, y'know otherwise, depending on what you think of this offering…)

Not Naïve

Another name to add to the list of the dead.

And yet, if they were entirely honest, every one of them had guessed it somewhere within themselves almost from day one. Lucas North was always going to be one of those damned stubborn heroes.

In the end, only Ros had been there to actually see it. Only Ros had watched as his lips twisted into an ironic, almost bemused, smile. Only Ros had heard the words in Russian, murmured mere moments before the bullet hit him. To her, to himself – she didn't know, but the phrase had stuck in her mind as though it had been branded there. Later on, when the grid was quiet and dark, she had consulted a Russian-English dictionary.

_Quiet now._

They were apt last words, and she was glad that he had had the opportunity to utter them. To die as, and when, and for a reason, chosen by him.

*

Ruth knocked before entering Harry's office. It was testament to the solemnity of the situation that she did so. She wanted to give him the opportunity to turn her away, knowing that if he did, it would be no real rejection; only his way of coping. She understood that he might want privacy. After all, she often asked him for the same, and he nearly always granted her wish.

As it was, he did not call out a brusque dismissal, but instead asked her in soft, mellow tones to, "Come in."

When she did, the first thing that she noticed was the presence of tears in the corners of his eyes, not spilling, but lingering stubbornly. In response, she crossed the office slowly to stand behind him, rubbing her fingertips soothingly across the back of his neck in the way that – even so early in their slowly blossoming relationship – she knew would ease some of the tension there.

The second thing that she noticed was the gun sat in his lap. This, she pretended not to have seen.

She did not bother with comforting sentiments – even as far back as McTaggart, she had known that they would do nothing to put him at ease, and she had been right. Instead, she did the only thing she knew how, and one of the things she knew he loved her for.

"Is there anything I can do? Anyone I should call?"

She coped.

Harry shook his head in reply. "I think Malcolm's already taken care of that. Just…" His shoulders sagged. "Just…stay with me. Please."

She nodded, and sat on the desk, facing him.

Immediately, Harry let his body fall forwards so that his face rested in the centre of her chest. Once comfortable, he inhaled deeply, and she smiled to herself as she felt his sharp intake of breath against the exposed skin at the neckline of her shirt. She had once caught him washing his bedclothes at her house, so that they would smell of her. He had not even blushed whilst telling her that he found it comforting.

He had been doing things like that ever since her return – savoring her, _relishing _her. Almost as though he could not believe that he had her back again. She couldn't complain though – she had stolen one of his favorite shirts to sleep in. He'd blamed its absence on the dry cleaning staff.

"Do we know who did it?" she asked, her voice gentle, her hand still playing with the soft, fine hair on his neck.

He shook his head, and this time she felt the warm friction of skin against skin. "Not yet."

Despite what he thought, she had always known when he was lying.

*

Ros blew into her hands, desperately trying to regain some of the feeling in her fingertips. The heater in the battered car they were sat in seemed to have packed in at about the same time as the dinosaurs had disappeared from the earth, and it was _freezing_.

"How much longer before he shows?" she asked eventually, her eyes still fixed firmly on the bleak, grey scene that lay on the other side of the windscreen.

Harry shrugged, and reached across her to pull the gun out of the glove compartment.

She spoke again.

"Does Ruth know you're here?"

This second question caught Harry by surprise, and he considered telling her to mind her own business. But then he remembered that this was Ros, after all – she was not asking to be nosey, or to interfere; only because she was interested. He also remembered that this was the second time that they had come, together, to the middle of nowhere, to seek a fleeting sensation of vengeance for the death of a man whom she – given a little more time – could have come to love.

"No," he replied.

His answer was brief and to the point, and it was obvious that he did not want to discuss the matter. He didn't want Ruth's name, or even the image of her, anywhere near this act. The bluntness in his voice did not, however, have the effect that he had hoped for. Ros was not deterred.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." His voice was hollow as he granted the elaboration she had forced from him with her nonjudgmental, questioning eyes – still shimmering with the grief she wouldn't let show. "Ruth thinks better of me than this."

*

Ruth poured a generous measure of wine into her glass, and craned her neck to check the time.

Midnight.

Midnight, and Harry still had not arrived back home. Taking a deep gulp from the glass, she held the wine in her mouth, letting it grow warmer and warmer, until it was the same temperature as her body. As the sweetness began to flood her senses, she closed her eyes and imagined the scene that she was so sure of, she could almost see it.

_Ros and Harry have been waiting for some time. They will have made sure that they are the first to arrive – perhaps from that fact they gain some sense of control, of power. They will not have to wait forever though. _

_Eventually, the unsuspecting man arrives. He thinks that he has gotten away with it. Thinks that he has stricken a mighty blow to Harry Pearce and his infamous team, and he will receive no punishment. He is gravely in error, and about to be taught a lesson from history._

_Both spooks exit the car in a smooth movement, almost perfectly synchronized. Their paces are similarly matched, but his strides are somewhat longer than hers, so he will reach the unsuspecting man quicker._

_The unsuspecting man who is not so unsuspecting any more. He considers running, but he does not. It is terrible; the hopelessness that has descended upon him – no matter how desperate a situation, a human being should always be able to run for his life. He wonders if perhaps this is guilt. Guilt for a life of dishonesty and murder. He almost laughs at the thought of explaining that to Harry Pearce and Miss Meyers; to them, he has no soul, no feelings. How could he feel guilty?_

_The shooting is quick, only a brief moment of stillness beforehand – to ensure that he sees their faces and he knows what he has brought upon himself. Then, he dies._

_It is Harry who pulls the trigger. For revenge._

Ruth's eyes reopened wearily.

The truth was, Harry would come home, and he would lie to her. He had no intention of telling her where he had been, what he had done. He would perhaps tell her that he had been walking to clear his head. Not at the embankment, where he usually went – that place held too much of 'them' in the air. No, he would invent a new place, and he would say that he had been walking there. Meanwhile, he would leave it to Ros to dispose of the gun.

And he would trust that Ruth would believe him.

No matter how much he denied the fact, he had always thought her naïve. He believed that her love for him was blind, that she thought him a better man than he actually was. That the man she adored was simply the man he pretended to be.

And she let him go on believing it.

So he didn't realise that she had always known. That she understood exactly what sort of a man he was, and she loved him despite that. She knew the dark places in him, and they did not scare her. She admired everything that he was – even if she didn't agree with all of it.

And all the while, she let him think that she was still sweet and innocent and girlish where his more violent, animalistic urges were concerned. She let him think that she believed every white lie that he told her, that she was misinformed and trusting. She let him think that she was sheltered, because he _needed_ to think it.

It worked, of course. Because she was a natural-born liar, and because he loved her so much that he would never 'disillusion' her. He actually thought that she would think less of him if she found out the things that he had done.

She swallowed the wine still sitting in her mouth, and took another healthy swig.

She would wait up for him for as many hours as he took to return.

*

Harry slid the key into the lock as quietly as he could manage. It was two in the morning; he presumed that Ruth would be in bed, and he didn't want to wake her. In fact, he wanted to postpone lying to her face for as long as he could.

As he hung his coat up and looked through to the front room, he saw that he had been wrong about her being in bed; she was curled up on the sofa, sleeping lightly, a half-empty bottle of wine on the coffee table before her.

Deciding that there was no way he could stand to simply leave her like that, he made to cover her up with the ethnic throw decorating the sofa – almost a physical sign of her new, increased presence in his life. As he did so, he could not resist placing a tired kiss on her cheek, and in the end, that was his undoing.

The soft pressure of his lips, and the warmth of his presence, dragged her from her sleep and into consciousness.

"Hello," she murmured, pulling him downwards, and shuffling about so that, eventually, he was lying with her on the sofa, his front pressed tightly against her back, the throw spread over the both of them.

"Hello." His lips sought the patch behind her ear, attempting to exact some absolution from the sensation of her skin against his.

She squirmed a little as his breath raised a trail of goose bumps down the side of her neck. "Where have you been?" she enquired sleepily.

"Walking."

She froze in his arms – so briefly that he didn't even notice – before threading her fingers through his.

"Oh. Feel better for it?"

He sighed deeply into her hair. "Yes."

They didn't bother relocating to the bedroom, simply choosing to fall asleep where they were, and before long, he had slipped into a deep slumber. She, on the other hand, stayed awake for many long hours, her liquid eyes wide and shining in the darkness.

He had always thought her naïve, and long would she let him continue to do so…

Reviews never hurt…:)


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